Gun control & civil liberties
What I don’t understand about this country is if the government really didn’t want people to play hockey, why would they allow them to have ice skates? Automatic weapons are designed and engineered to do exactly one thing, and that’s to kill other human beings as quickly as possible. If the government wants to reduce murder rates, why not outlaw the sale and manufacture of the most common instrument of murderers? People cry “recreation! target practice!” but riddle me this: why are the targets shaped like humans, with higher scores arranged around the more fatal areas to shoot someone? Isn’t that just encouraging murder?
The NRA’s idea of kid-friendly “Eddie Eagle” gun safety education program is a childish concept designed for children. Imagine the board meeting for that one: hey, here’s an idea, fellow NRA members. Let’s make a nice cartoon animal to show kids that guns are for grown ups. Because kids will totally take guns seriously when a guy in a bird suit dances around singing about how dangerous they are. I see two terrible effects of Mr Eagle. Number one, children will associate firearms with the frivolity of their cartoon spokesman. Number two, as with the DARE program, by telling kids something is for adults only, they’ll want to do it even more. You have to be eighteen to smoke? Then it must be cool, and I’ll start smoking at age twelve.
Conservatives and Second Amendment activists say that outlawing firearms would accomplish nothing, because criminals would get them anyway. I understand how this can be seen as a compelling argument, but the same could be argued for a score of other issues that conservatives wouldn’t espouse. People get illicit drugs anyway, so legalize all of them? People would have abortions anyway, so keep them legal? The idea is not that criminals wouldn’t be able to get any guns at all, but that they would be near impossible to come by and they’d be illegal to carry on your person. There’s a man walking down the street in today’s society with an automatic weapon in full view. He’s on his way to murder schoolchildren a couple of blocks away, but the police who drive by him don’t know this. They are powerless in today’s world, but if guns are outlawed—or at least the most dangerous weapons—they could arrest a criminal for merely having an illicit firearm on his person or in his possession, preventing all kinds of potential future crimes.